AI Video Search Startup Clipto Hits $250M Valuation in New Funding
Three-year-old AI startup Clipto has raised $15 million in a new funding round, pushing its valuation to $250 million with its multi-file search tool.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- Clipto raises $15 million, reaching a post-money valuation of $250 million
- AI-powered tool indexes and searches videos, audio, and documents locally
- Reaches over 30 million users since launch and remains profitable
Generative artificial intelligence has drastically simplified content creation, but it has simultaneously created a massive organizational headache. As digital files, recordings, and documents accumulate, major tech players like Adobe, Apple, Google, and a wave of new startups are racing to integrate AI into file searching. The industry is still debating whether this capability will naturally evolve into a standard feature of existing platforms or blossom into an entirely standalone software category.
Clipto is banking firmly on the latter. Headquartered in San Francisco with additional teams in Singapore and Hong Kong, the three-year-old startup has secured $15 million in an all-equity funding round, bringing its post-money valuation to $250 million. Backing for this round came from investors including HSG, formerly Sequoia China, GL Ventures, EnvisionX Capital, Palm Drive Capital, Hans Tung, Lu Zhang, and 522 Ventures.
The platform indexes videos, audio, images, meetings, and various other files stored locally on a user's computer. Instead of digging through cluttered folder hierarchies, users can simply describe what they are looking for or instruct external AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude to locate the files for them.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
Founder and CEO Henry Kang has spent roughly two decades tackling data indexing and retrieval problems. During his time as a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University in 2006, he built environment-mapping robots, later applying similar concepts to a closet-management startup and subsequently founding ZenVideo, a video creation tool that Tencent acquired in 2020.
"The real insight is that in this AI era, we don’t have a content shortage. The opposite is true. We have too much content. We have too much video footage sitting on our computers that isn’t being used."
Henry Kang, Founder and CEO of Clipto
Although Clipto initially targeted video creators struggling to manage fragmented footage, creator workflows now comprise only about one-quarter to one-third of its user base. The remaining majority spans professionals across legal, medical, research, marketing, human resources, academic, and student sectors.
Clipto's ability to thrive despite native search tools from ecosystem giants like Apple, Google, and Adobe highlights a clear market demand for cross-platform utility. By enabling users to query diverse file formats and feed selective context into third-party AI agents like ChatGPT, the startup occupies a unique middleware niche that traditional ecosystems often leave unaddressed.
The company reports that over 30 million people have utilized its products since inception, backed by hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers. Kang noted that Clipto hit $15 million in annual recurring revenue at the beginning of 2026 and remains profitable on a net-income basis, operating with just over 20 employees distributed across San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
Fresh capital from this round will be channeled into advancing foundational AI models, optimizing computing infrastructure to run smoothly on consumer hardware, and building deeper integrations with additional AI agents.
Source: TechCrunch
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